I'd like to clarify up top that I am a New York Yankees fan myself, born and raised. So I understand all too well what the standard is for this franchise in the post-Core Four era, and that all of the good vibes this team is feeling right now after beating the brakes off the Boston Red Sox this week won't mean much of anything if they can't play good baseball and beat the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS. Until we see New York deliver on the biggest stage without shooting itself in the foot first, there will always be questions about the foundation here, and those questions won't be unjustified.
Since we've got two days to kill before focusing on Tampa, though, I do feel like an apology is in order. No, Brian Cashman isn't perfect. He's made plenty of mistakes over the course of his tenure — plenty of mistakes this year, even — and nearly two decades without a title is what it is. But the Yankees' Wild Card sweep over Boston felt like a rebuke of his most fervent haters, proof positive of just what he's built on and off the field. And no matter what happens the rest of this month, it's hard not to feel like organization is in good hands moving forward.
Yankees' Wild Card win vs. Red Sox should put to rest the 'no homegrown talent' narrative
The lowest-hanging fruit on the Cashman Criticism tree is that he's simply a product of his franchise's considerable payroll, that his Yankees are incapable of developing their own talent and would be consistent losers if forced to compete on a level economic playing field. So, on that note, here's a brief and certainly not complete list of all the homegrown players who played a part in New York's Wild Card sweep this week:
- C Austin Wells
- DH Ben Rice
- 2B Anthony Volpe
- SS George Lombard Jr.
- OF Spencer Jones
- RHP Cam Schlittler
That's six Yankees draft picks, none of whom were taken higher than No. 25 overall, the point at which the MLB Draft becomes far more crapshoot than science. Oh, and it's not even including reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge (first round, 2013), currently battling a calf strain, or pitcher Will Warren (eighth round, 2021), who was a rock-solid back-end starter this season before transitioning pretty seamlessly to the bullpen.
Jazz Chisholm Jr.? Acquired for prospects that Cashman developed. Luis Garcia Jr.? Ditto. I certainly won't argue that the ability to throw nine figures at pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Max Fried doesn't help immensely with your championship push, but the idea that New York's player development team doesn't know it's doing simply isn't in touch with reality. If it were, the Yankees surely wouldn't have been able to successfully weather their downright comical rash of injuries to still find their way back to the postseason.
None of which absolves Cashman of his team's failures in October in recent years. But we make far, far too much out of what happens over a few weeks and a handful of games. No, it's not a sign that Cashman's Yankees don't know what they're doing or don't know how to win. It's just a sign that winning a World Series is hard; that's a lesson Yankees fans used to know, and one they'd do well not to forget.
Brian Cashman is judged by rings, but consistency is half the battle
The Yankees have not finished at or below .500 since 1992, including all 29 years of Cashman's tenure as general manager (which began in 1998). Credit Gene Michael all you want, devalue Cashman's contributions to the franchise's four World Series titles from 1996 to 2000. But this has been Cashman's organization from top to bottom for a very long time now, and still all they've done is put a winning product on the field.
Plenty of fans want to take that for granted, to argue that the Yankees should do nothing but win. But look around the rest of the league. The Dodgers were a mess before Mark Walter took over; every other big-market team, from the Red Sox to the Cubs to the Phillies to the Giants, has suffered at least a fallor period or two. You can have all the money you want, but that's no guarantee of success, especially not when you're picking toward the back of the first round every year.
And yet, here the Yankees are, year after year pretty much without fail. (They've also missed the playoffs just five times with Cashman at the helm.) That shouldn't be taken for granted, even if it hasn't resulted in a ring in a while. Many of the same fans who bash Cashman hold up the Milwaukee Brewers as an example organization, and yet for all of Milwaukee's development wins and great regular seasons, they've yet to make it back to the World Series since 1982 — and have only reached the NLCS three times in that span.
So much of this comes down to circumstance, to the stars aligning. You build the best team you can, and then cross your fingers and pray. You can see this with this year's Yankees team, even: Despite all those injuries, most of the team sans Judge is getting healthy at the right time. The reality is things could be much, much worse, and it's hard not to watch the product New York put on the field on Tuesday and Wednesday and not think that the foundation here is pretty darn strong.
Add us as a preferred source on Google